A ledger, when torn, does not simply disappear into the air. It unravels knots that had been holding other knots. The magistrate, stripped of his secret, lost his footing. Traders who had relied on quiet deals began to panic. They sought scapegoats. They wanted blood.
They found it in us.
An organized hunt began, not of men of power but of those who carried inconvenient questions. Mei was arrested as an agitator. I escaped by the skin of my teeth, thanks to a bodeker's mercy and Yù's wings. They called us blasphemers and thieves while the real culprits wore robes and masks of decency.
In the months that followed, the city flamed in small bursts. Markets closed early. Houses were raided. A public scholar I had once admired was found dead in a courtyard, a note tucked into his hand that read like an apology for the world.
Each death felt like a point on a compass that had been turned wrong. Each loss added weight to my oath until it bent me like a bowstring. Yù watched me with the patient sorrow of a creature who had seen seasons come and go.
"Vengeance has a hunger," she said one night. "It eats what you offer and then asks for more."
"What else could I have done?" I asked, voice raw.
"You could have looked at the ledger and asked why the system existed," she replied. "You could have called for the court's reform instead of burning pages — though I do not pretend reform would have been easy. You could have done many things, and some of them would have spared lives."
Her words were not absolution. They were counsel. They were the cool hand on a fevered brow. They were, also, the indictment of my own impulsive heart.
I had not saved my brother with the ledger. I had not brought him back. I had, instead, started a fire that would change the shape of the city. I asked myself, at night, if the shape it took would be better or worse than before. I did not know.